He is a strong, determined man of mettle and courage.
* * *
—
Great Wayne sent the letter to me within a week. I emailed him back, thanking him and asking him to throw around any titles he had or ever had had. He laid the titles on, until the list looked like a parody of a psychoanalytic Who’s Who, and if he had been that kind of guy, he would have added Rufus T. Firefly, Prime Minister of Freedonia. I send the letter to Dignitas and I wait to hear from Heidi. I don’t think I should show the letter to Brian and he doesn’t ask to see it.
“I enjoyed talking with Wayne,” he says. “The man knows all about Fordham’s Seven Blocks of Granite offensive line. Good man.”
End of November 2019, Stony Creek
It’s the day before Thanksgiving and Brian has had one more Dignitas phone interview （he remembers the word Alzheimer’s; he remembers that it’s Switzerland, not Sweden）， and Heidi tells us we now have the provisional green light. She reveals that her name is really S. We thank her quietly. S. sighs, like a pilot who has safely landed the plane. She says, Mr. Ameche, please have a nice weekend. Mrs. Bloom, you, too. She tells us that there will be more emails coming with more details and more documents needed. This is the call we have been working toward since August.
We’ve heard what we needed to hear, and in the first moment, Brian hugs me hard, because we have accomplished the thing we wanted to accomplish, and done it together, and he loves teamwork. And then the light changes and dims; I am in the world without him in it; he sees, clearly, the world going on without him, me alone in the kitchen and him not next to me. After we make sure we’ve hung up properly, we cry in each other’s arms and, without speaking, we go right up to bed for a nap, at 11 A.M., and only come down when the kids come through the door, ready to start Thanksgiving prep.
I tell the kids, while Brian makes a sandwich, in his usual fussy, happily attentive way. We are all crammed in the kitchen, relieved, in an awful way, relieved that Brian will be able to do what he wishes to do, and, except for Brian, we are weepy and distressed. Brian takes my daughter Caitlin aside and tells her that she must take care of me, and she promises that she will, and I cry in the doorway. He finishes his sandwich and goes upstairs, to watch the news.
I start dropping things. I drop the ceramic pie weights onto the kitchen floor. I drop an entire open bottle of corn syrup into a bowl of butter and eggs. I burn the toast. I actually set one pie on fire in the oven and quadruple the amount of bourbon in the other so that no one who is not a Kentucky drunk could eat it. It’s not just that I can’t hold on to anything （metaphor received） but how little I care and how little effort I’m prepared to make to fix any of it. I gather up most of the pie weights and just tell everyone to be careful where they walk. The mothers of the grandchildren hunt down every pie weight I missed, and I let them. I throw out the bottle of corn syrup and then I throw out the butter and eggs, too. I leave the burnt toast in the toaster oven and figure that someone, at some point, will need to use the toaster oven and they will remove the blackened toast. I think, And this is how you get to Grey Gardens.
I don’t have the energy to run around in a leotard and anklets, but I see how old people get used to dust and stickiness, mild filth and mildewed towels. It’s not because they are too blind or weak to do anything about these problems necessarily but because they have just seen too much. When you’ve buried all your closest friends, how worked up can you get about a trace of lipstick on a coffee cup or a ribbon of dust on the frame of the photo of someone you’ll never see again? You’ve buried two wives and two brothers who loved you and left you—how seriously can you take the worn spot （now sort of a hole） at the back of the chair? Perspective is useful, of course: It’s why very few people want to be eighteen again. But the other side is having so much perspective, it’s hard to give a damn about anything happening here in the real.
Children are always the exception for me, and I am watching them all, my three and their four, and I’m grateful because if not for them, we’d be living in filth already, remote in hand.
* * *
—
Thanksgiving is done, Christmas is coming, and so is my mother-in-law.
Brian and I already knew the broad outlines, and the details, of Alzheimer’s from the story of my mother-in-law’s best friend of fifty years. Yvonne’s best friend was an aunt to Brian, a regular dinner guest, formidably well dressed in the Nancy Reagan mold （the custom pantsuit with the matching navy-and-white silk flower on the lapel and the sapphire earrings to match; I admired her）， a great golfer, a devoted philanthropist （to causes I reviled）， and my mother-in-law’s boon companion for movies, dinner, and drinks at the club. She had descended into Alzheimer’s these last few years, as if on an express. First she complained about the cleaning lady, then she complained about her occasional guests, then she complained about her son. Then she complained that valuables were being moved to odd places and probably stolen. Then she could no longer navigate, not even during the day, not even on roads she’d driven for fifty years, and my mother-in-law had to drive them to the club and to the late-afternoon movies. Then she became violent and tearful, afraid of the terrible real and imaginary forces beyond her control. Then her son placed her in an assisted-living facility, which she resented and complained about loudly, and then she didn’t have the capacity to behave well in the communal dining room or dress appropriately for the yoga class or even to keep herself clean and get along with her healthcare aide. Then her son moved her into a memory-care unit. And then she lost a tooth, and then another, and sat on her bed, waiting to leave. She was clean enough but badly dressed and she still knew my mother-in-law and, weeping at every visit, begged her friend to take her home. My mother-in-law had not spared us the details.
In early December, Yvonne arrives for a visit. We have some kind of dinner, all wonderful Italian food brought by Yvonne, and Yvonne has a splash of vodka and we go to bed early. Yvonne and I are up very early. （I think I saw the sunrise every day that year.） Brian and I decide it’s time to share our loose plan with her—that right before we took off for Zurich, Brian would send his family an email letting them know of his decision to go to Dignitas, and afterward I would send everyone, friends and family, a second letter, shaped by him, about his death:
Dear Friends,
Some of you know, and some of you do not: Brian was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s this past summer. It has been a difficult, demanding, and heartbreaking time and through it all, two things have been unwavering: our loving and supportive families and Brian’s considered and clear decision that he would not and did not choose “the long goodbye” of Alzheimer’s, over the next ten years.
Brian, who loved his lucky wife, his life, and all of the fishing, football, fiction, and family it contained, made arrangements to end his life, peacefully and painlessly, at Dignitas in Zurich, with me by his side.
He was, throughout this time, remarkably courageous while grief-stricken and warm, loving, and engaged with all of us, even as he faced the end of his life. He continued with art, with walks on the Trolley Trail of Stony Creek, and with his service to Planned Parenthood, to which he was deeply committed.